If you know someone who is unemployed, underemployed,
or without job security,
you may want to look into an idea whose time is coming:
the idea of a universal basic income or UBI. Polls have shown
that a majority of the general population in a number of
countries find themselves unable to accept the idea of a UBI.
Raised to revere the work ethic they fear that a UBI, if set at a
level to permit a decent life, would reward idleness and create
legions of free riders. The fact that
empirical studies
undertaken in Canada and the U.S. suggest that the incentive to
work is not significantly weakened by income
security hardly seems to make a dent in such entrenched
attitudes. These attitudes often find expression in the phrase,
“I don’t believe in handouts.”

It’s essential to understand that a UBI in no
way rules out full-time, adequately paid employment, but rather
softens the loss of its availability to all. A UBI provides the
security of a bare living. Moreover, if it could be shown that the
well-to-do receive
“handouts”—although
they’re not called
handouts, and they take forms that disguise their true nature
even from most of those who benefit from them—far in excess of
anything describable as a UBI, would you be prepared to
reconsider your opinion? On what basis would you deny to the
poor what society unquestioningly, though without fully
understanding, grants to the rich?

At www.basicincome.com you will
find the case for a UBI, as well as a summary of the simple UBI
model for Canada presented in the book Basic Income: Economic
Security for all Canadians by S. Lerner, C. M. A. Clark, W.
R. Needham, 1999. You will also find a fact sheet entitled
‘Canadian
Economic Data.’ A study of this data should convince
you that the rich receive very generous handouts indeed (courtesy
of tax loopholes and, more subtly but more importantly, the
system of money creation known as
fractional reserve banking).

The English journalist G. K. Chesterton said that too much capitalism
doesn’t mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists. Unregulated
capitalism and state socialism are twin blunders, capitalism because it
concentrates wealth
in the hands of the few thereby undermining democracy, and socialism
because it concentrates power in the hands of a class of state officials who
proceed to appropriate the lion’s share of the meagre output of a
socialist economy for themselves. Of the two systems capitalism is infinitely
preferable, firstly because the chief safeguard of personal freedom in a
democratic society is the anarchy and disorder of capitalist individualism,
and secondly because capitalism produces so much more wealth. Nevertheless,
the great and growing economic inequality in the world today, both within
nations and among nations, should be seen as a very dangerous ongoing crisis.
But we must be very careful to avoid the blunder of blaming the rich instead of
the true culprit—human nature. We have no reason to suppose, if
rich and poor could trade places, that the poor would behave any better.
They might well behave worse, as commonly happens when the exploited suddenly find
themselves in a position to exploit. No, the rich take full advantage of the fact
that our economy and tax system are organized and managed to their
advantage—most of them don’t lose a moment’s sleep over it
either—because that’s a very human thing to do. It was ever thus, and it’s a
sign of maturity not to be scandalized by it.

Capitalism is based on the
principle of competition. People must work hard in order to
succeed. But many people, through no fault of their own, are
ill-equipped to live in such a competitive world. If we think it
wrong to discriminate on the basis of race, creed or colour, why
do we tolerate economic discrimination on the basis of energy,
academic aptitude, or the motivating desire for wealth? It’s up
to the victims of our economy, and their sympathizers in the
middle class, to point to the obvious injustice
in much of modern economic practice, as well as to the
historic change underway in
the nature of work. Though it may be delayed the day is coming
when our society will agree with John Kenneth Galbraith,
‘Everybody should be guaranteed a decent basic income. A rich
country...can well afford to keep everybody out of poverty.’

(Two Pages in IE5.0)

A Simple Universal
Basic Income Model for
Canada for Purposes
of Discussion